POP Unit
The Problem Oriented Policing Unit (POP) is a specially trained and dedicated unit to building relationships with community members and local businesses. Using innovative policing methods to help improve a resident's quality of life issues and addressing local business concerns.
POP Officers
The POP Unit (Monday-Friday) is comprised of one Lieutenant, one Sergeant, five Police Officers, and one administrative assistant.
Three of the POP officers are dedicated to address long-term public/business safety concerns that affect residents/business owners in their day-to-day life. Two of the officers are assigned to our Homeless Outreach, where they are actively building relationships with our homeless community while also addressing neighborhood concerns.
For all complaints or concerns, please contact the POP Unit at POP@elkgrovepd.org or (916) 478-8110
Problem-Oriented Policing (POP) Report Form
Components of Community Policing
- Redefines the roles and relationship between the police and the community.
- Requires shared ownership, decision making and accountability, as well as sustained commitment from both the police and the community.
- Establishes new public expectations of and measurement standards for police effectiveness.
- New standards include quality of service, citizen satisfaction, cultural sensitivity, and responsiveness to community defined issues.
- Increases understanding and trust between police and community members. Promotes more contacts, greater communication, and information exchange.
- Empowers and strengthens community-based efforts.
- Requires greater flexibility to respond to emerging issues. Personnel and resources must be flexible to respond to problems identified through increased contacts and intelligence developed about current community problems.
- Requires long-term, strategic planning to address underlying conditions that cause community problems.
- Requires knowledge of available community resources and how to access and mobilize them, as well as an ability to develop new resources within the community.
- Requires buy-in from the top management of the police and other local government agencies.
- Requires internal philosophical support to promote risk taking, creativity and innovation, and a commitment to free officers' time and provide necessary resources.
- Decentralizes police services, operations and management, and encourages innovative and creative problem-solving.
- Empowers employees by giving them the authority and support to make decisions.
How Does Community Policing Work
A focus of Community Policing is problem-solving. Police will still respond to emergencies. However, many calls to the police are not police-related. They are more effectively handled by other agencies. As the number of these non-emergency calls decrease:
- Officers are able to spend more time working with citizens to solve crime and disorder problems.
- With better police-citizen communication, officers can more effectively use and share crime information with the public.
- Officers who know both a community's problems and its residents can link people with other public and private agencies that can help solve community concerns.
- No single agency can solve complex social problems alone. A combined community-police effort restores the safety of our neighborhoods and business districts.
Problem Oriented Policing Staff
pop@elkgrovepd.org
(916) 478-8110
Why is it Important?
- Crime and demands for service continue to increase.
- Budgets and resources continue to decrease.
- We live in a rapidly changing environment, where flexibility in problem-solving becomes critical to the success of our organization.
- Citizens are becoming more involved in government and want a say in how resources are applied.
| Community Policing | vs | Traditional Policing |
|---|---|---|
| Effective | vs | Efficient |
| Quality | vs | Quantity |
| Proactive | vs | Reactive |
| Problem Solver | vs | Incident driven |
Police agencies traditionally spend only 20-30% of their time responding to actual crimes. The remaining 70-80% of their time is spent on civil and social issues. The philosophy of Community Policing does not abandon the strategies of traditional policing. Our organization has been very successful in responding to, investigating, and solving serious crimes, and we will continue to employ traditional strategies to solve criminal problems. Community Policing and problem-solving strategies give us the opportunity to:
- Identify problems
- Analyze problems
- Develop long-term solutions to problems
- Evaluate progress and adjust solutions as necessary
By making an effort to develop long-term solutions to problems, our organization will reduce the amount of time spent on non-criminal solutions, thereby reducing demands for service and increasing the amount of time that officers can spend on community problem-solving efforts.